


One Dream at a Time

by cimera



Category: Minority Report (TV 2015)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:50:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cimera/pseuds/cimera
Summary: Wally works through some issues one restless night at a time, and with a little help from his friends.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livrelibre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livrelibre/gifts).



_1._

_You stare down at the lifeless bodies, the white lights and the ripple of the water giving the scene a sense of harsh unreality. There’s a noise to your left and you turn away from the tank._

_They’re all there, accusation in their eyes. Agatha, crying softly, is cradled against Arthur’s chest. Dash stands to the side – he moves a step closer to Vega and puts a hand on her shoulder. Next to Vega is Blake - their faces bear similar looks of disappointment._

_You take a step towards the group and their faces harden. Agatha looks up, her eyes red, and points an elegant finger straight at your heart. Her mouth opens…_

Wally woke up suddenly, his heart pounding so loud he felt like he could barely hear someone banging on his front door. A part of him was grateful, as he stumbled from the couch, that he wouldn’t have a chance to hear what the Agatha in his dream would have said.

The door stuck briefly in its frame, thanks to the new reinforcements, but a sharp tug revealed Detective Vega on his porch, her fist poised to knock again. Her cop eyes seemed to scan him quickly and Wally wondered if he somehow looked like a man who had murdered three people in cold-blood.

More like someone who hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in a week, he thought wryly and stepped aside to let her in.

“Detective, what brings you to my neighbourhood?” he tried to inject a little of his old sarcasm into his voice but he had a feeling he didn’t sound anything but tired.

Thankfully, Vega wasn’t the type to pry into a person’s issues without just cause and she got straight to the point. “I need some data analysed, strictly off-the-books,” she held up a plain black data card as she spoke. “It’s something I don’t want anywhere near the Metro servers.”

Wally was exhausted, and still shaken up from his most recent nightmare, but he could read between the data streams. “Something to do with our recently departed friends?”

As soon as he said it, Wally realised his turn of phrase could have meant the agents he’d killed or the pre-cogs who’d left the city for their own protection.

Once again, Vega didn’t take the opening. “Most likely, but I’m going to need you to do as deep a check as you can on this stuff.”

Wally nodded, his brain already preparing search algorithms.

“And,” she added as she handed over the drive, “I forgot to mention there’s some sort of encryption on it – pretty high level stuff according to Akeela.”

Wally grinned in anticipation of cracking someone else’s security program. To his surprise, Vega was grinning back at him and for a moment they were connected again by the crazy situation and the mutual desire to keep their friends safe.

He went to work right away and didn’t notice when Vega left. Wally slept again when he was triumphant, and tired enough that there were no dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

_2._

_You stare down at the containment tank as the alarms blare around you. From the corner of your eye, a bio-alert flashes in time with the siren. In a heartbeat the office and the glass partition are gone – you stand over the tank, staring down at the wrinkled bodies inside. Agatha’s eyes are open, staring unseeing at the dark ceiling, but Dash and Arthur are still, not even the lift of their chests to show some sign of life._

_After all these years, all those lives saved, this is the end for the pre-cogs. You lift your hand to reach out to her and notice your own hand, also wrinkled and spotted with age. Agatha’s eyes turn to you, piercing even in the strange glow of the tank. She gives a last, lingering breath and then her eyes slowly close._

_You are the last thing she sees before dying, you are the only thing any of them have seen for many years. The only thing besides violence, fear, and death._

This time, Wally woke up slowly. The sadness of the dream mingled for a long moment with the sadness of his memories before he mentally shook himself and stood up.

He brought his breakfast over to his main desk and sat down to eat while scrolling through messages on one screen and news alerts on another. A private message to one of his fake identities pinged just as he was getting up to return his bowl to the kitchen.

The message was a web address that led to a forum for the D.C. Better Business Bureau, specifically a sub-forum discussing a local wilderness tour company. While running a back trace on the original message, Wally began scrolling through the forum posts. After a few pages he found what he was looking for – an unusual post that described the superior scenery of a hiking trail near Castle Lake in California and made no mention of the tour company. The username was “peaceandliberty” and their profile included a generic email address.

Not wanting to get his hopes up, Wally waiting until the back trace was complete, and the second, more robust trace had also finished before he prepared to send an email using a completely different identity than the one he had been contacted with. His trace had been bounced through several countries, but showed an origin near Helena, Montana. He was careful to make his email bland and impersonal, as though he were a thoughtful grandson writing to his grandmother with just a typo in the address.

***

After three days with no reply, Wally went back to the forum and found that the original post about Castle Lake had been erased. He also couldn’t find any trace of “peaceandliberty”. If it really was the pre-cogs, he admired their caution, but he worried that he hadn’t heard back from them.

The next day he had a scheduled delivery of replaceable parts for his server. He like to change them every four to six weeks and destroy the old ones just in case. The drone left the package by the front porch as per his instructions with the delivery company and after checking his security cameras, Wally went outside to pick it up.

When he opened the box, the first thing he saw was a birthday card with a cartoon giraffe on the front. He picked it up and inside was a simple message: 

Create: 0nthepotomac4@securemail.com

Underneath the card his delivery was exactly as he had ordered it, and within two hours of creating the email account he had a message from Agatha. They were safe, they were happy, and he now had a way to keep in touch with them.


	3. Chapter 3

_3._

_You feel the sensation of water on your body as they lower you into the tank, but you can’t move, can’t speak, can’t struggle against the hands holding you down and strapping you in._

_The lights only partly illuminate the faces standing over you, the DIA agents sneer as they meet your eyes, their pale, lifeless skin a stark contrast to their dark suits. Blomfeld leans close and whispers harshly, “What did you think would happen?”_

_They turn and walk away, leaving you with the slowly quieting sound of the water and the bright light in your eyes. Darkness begins to seep in, and you struggle to stay awake…_

Wally gasped and sat up, clawed at the thin blanket that felt like it was suffocating him. He glanced around his room, checked the green lights on his security system blinking in the dark, and then got up anyway.

Downstairs the computers whirred to life after he passed the retinal scan and he zapped himself a cup of coffee from his machine. He checked his usual haunts online, and found enough to distract him until the morning sun started to peek in through his curtains. The doorbell rang just as he was starting to have thoughts about breakfast.

Akeela stood on his porch, her eyebrows arched as she took in his crumpled pajamas.

“Come on in,” he said sarcastically as she breezed by him and into the living room.

“Your place looks as post-apocalyptic as usual,” she wandered over to the far window and ran her finger over a windowsill.

“Is that what you’re here for?” he asked, “checking up on me?”

She frowned slightly, and looked less sure of herself than usual. “To be honest, I wanted to run some things by you, and thought we could get a coffee.”

He must have looked skeptical, because she continued without waiting for his reply, “Some days I just need to get out of the office, and I had a feeling you wouldn’t come down to Metro to talk, so…”

Wally laughed, “You’ve got that right, wizard, I’m not going to walk into the mouth of the beast, just hand myself over for the jackboots to throw me in a dark hole and conveniently forget where the key is!” He felt himself getting worked up, and welcomed the rush of anger and adrenaline. It seemed more normal, more…healthy, than the feelings lingering from his nightmare.

When Akeela simply looked at him, he mumbled a quiet apology and sat down on the couch. “I get it,” she said softly after he took a moment to collect himself. “After everything that’s happened, and the inquiry, I still get nervous when I see people in suits that I don’t know come into the precinct.”

He sat up straight and looked her in the eye, “No offense, Akeela, but it’s a little bit different from where I’m sitting. Your biggest offense in all this is, what, fraud?”

She sighed and found an armchair to sit in. “You have a point, of course, but what about my coffee idea?”

They shared a laugh, and eventually a coffee.


	4. Chapter 4

4\. 

Crouching down behind a shipping crate, Wally turned his head to whisper to Vega beside him, “When you said you needed my help to sort this out, I did not expect to be in actual danger of death!”

“Be quiet!” she whispered to him and then popped back up to fire at the hired goons who had cornered them in this warehouse.

It sounded to Wally like they were getting closer. He glanced down at his tablet, then hunched over it quickly when a blast smashed against the crate to his right. “Are they getting closer?” he hissed at Vega when she ducked back down.

“I think so,” she answered and her eyes had the far-away look that he associated with her using her lenses. “There were three, anyway and now there’s six, so, close or not we need a new plan.”

“Six!”

“This way, come one,” Vega tugged on his arm and they scuttled as quickly as they could to a stack of crates closer to the far wall.

“What about signals? Are they still jamming them?”

Wally checked his tablet again, “Yes, but the skip I programmed before they arrived probably got out.”

“Probably?”

“Results are variable, but…”

Two more blasts at the crates they had just vacated interrupted his explanation. In the silence that followed, Wally could hear the slight scuff of shoes and the whispers of their pursuers. They were definitely getting closer – they definitely knew where they were and were probably just taunting them, waiting until the last possible minute to pop around the side of the crates and shoot them both in the head.

Vega shook his arm when his breathing started to get shallow. “Calm down, Wally, I’ll get us out of here,” she assured him, with only a slightly worried look on her face.

Wally wanted to tell her that he appreciated the idea, but there was a huge crash from the opposite end of the warehouse and suddenly the whole place was filled with noise – shouting, gunfire, an armoured police vehicle smashing into crates.

Peering over their crate, Wally saw a team from Metro P.D. completely decimate the thugs, with Vega getting into the fray and knocking out two of them. When it seemed safe to come out, Wally emerged from behind the crates and was met by Blake heading over to shake his hand.

“We got your message, good work.” Blake shook his hand and gave him a solid smack on the back before walking back over to where the bad guys were being loaded into a van.

Wally’s tablet beeped, and he looked down to see an alert, notifying him that the skip program had completed its run successfully. I’m going to make a lot of money on this one, he thought to himself as he wandered back to where Vega was waiting to take him home. 

_You’re at home; your computers, coffee machine, couch, they’re all exactly where they should be. All your friends are there, and everyone has a drink. They’re celebrating – maybe a birthday, maybe some holiday._

_Agatha walks over to you, her hair is shining and she is smiling. Behind her, Arthur and Dash are watching, but they seem happy, content. She puts her hand on your arm and says, What did you think would happen?_

_You want to answer her, but you have no idea what to say. “Maybe I should wake up,” you mumble instead. She continues to smile and then you do._

The End


	5. Outtakes!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A scene that was cut very early on, in which Agatha and Wally have an actual conversation.

~~

“I’m worried about you Wally. You seem adrift, like you’re not processing what happened.”  
“You mean, what I did.”  
Agatha sighed and a snarl of static curled across her face. Wally leaned to the left and adjusted the interface, but there wasn’t much he could do about the quality of the call. Connections were tricky when on the run.  
“Wally, none of us is blameless in this situation. I got the information about the new milk bath at the expense of someone’s life, and you took care of the aftermath. We don’t think any less of you.”  
She sounded sincere, but all Wally could think about was the idea of taking care – by a certain standard, he was a great caretaker. For years he had looked after the pre-cogs, watching over their bodies and abilities while the whole setup was based on the lies he willingly took part in. And when the time came to help them again, his answer was murder. He had killed three men with hardly a thought, but in the weeks that followed he had plenty of time to think about it. To think about whether new sins could somehow make up for the old.  
“I appreciate the sentiment Agatha, but I called to see how you three are doing. Is everything alright, wherever you are?”  
Agatha laughed wryly, “I feel like I’m not even sure where I am these days. We’ve moved so many times in the last three weeks, it’s all starting to be a blur.”  
“Okay, don’t tell me where you are, or anything, but what have you seen? What’s something good about where you are now?”  
Agatha smiled for a moment, “The trees. It’s so green here, it reminds me of home.”  
After a few more minutes of conversation, the tracking alert pinged. Wally didn’t want to take any chances that what he did might be monitored so he kept their communication brief.  
“Say hi to the boys for me, and take care of yourself,” he signed off and sat for a moment staring at the desk after the holo-mat had folded itself back into its tray.  
In the three weeks since the thwarted Memento Mori attack, Wally had only spoken to Agatha twice. They were careful to keep the conversations brief, and Agatha never told him where they were or what their plans were. He worried about them, but he was used to the helpless feeling of not being able to actually do anything for them. A part of him was just glad that he had been able to help as much as he had – though he wasn’t sure that killing was exactly the same as helping. Some days it felt like it was, some days it felt like he was just a fool who would never get out from under all his guilt.  
“Maybe I do need to talk to someone,” he muttered to himself and got up to make some dinner. If nothing else, he could at least try to maintain some normalcy...just in case his days as a free man were numbered.


End file.
